Blogs I Like

Politics

July 27, 2008

More than just the name of the new X-Files movie, I Want To Believe is what people must think when they receive a forwarded email and decide to then send it to everyone in their address book too. I'm not sure what makes that unsolicited and unverified information so irresistible to some folks but the chain is hard to break.

Some of the more famous, and durable, email hoaxes include "Bill Gates wants to pay you to try a new email program," "Telemarketers will soon be given your cell phone number if you don't put it on a Do Not Call list," and "Boycott gas stations on a certain date to send a message to Big Oil."

Politicians are often victims of mass email smears, either through carelessness or malice. Some recent examples of widely circulated stories that are false include "George W. Bush has the lowest IQ of any president" and "John McCain does not qualify to run for president because he was born in Panama."

But Senator Barack Obama is the undisputed recent champion of misinformation victims. See how many of these untrue stories you recognize from the past year:

"Barack Hussein Obama" is a Muslim.""Barack Hussein Obama is a radical Muslim""Barack Obama will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance.""Barack Obama was sworn into office on the Quran""Barack Obama has been endorsed for president by the Ku Klux Klan.""The bulk of donations to Barack Obama's campaign come from foreign financiers."

And my very favorite, "The Book of Revelations describes the Anti-Christ as someone with characteristics matching those of Barack Obama." That one includes a Biblical warning about Muslims that was written some 400 years before Islam was even founded!

New to in-boxes this week is an email originating from a Captain Jeffrey S. Porter, soldier in Afghanistan describing how the Senator "blew off" the troops during a brief visit to Bagram. It described how he ignored soldiers that "were lined up to shake his hand" in order to instead "take his publicity pictures playing basketball."

U.S. Army spokespeople have declared the email "factually false," citing among other things that Mr. Obama "took time to shake hands, speak to troops, and pose for photographs" while in Bagram. Additionally, he did not visit the recreation tent mentioned in the original email for basketball, photos or any other reason. The solider may have been confused since the Senator did spend some time in the gym, playing and talking with dozens of American servicemen in Kuwait earlier in the week.

Capt. Porter has since released a statement that includes, "After checking my sources, information that was put out in my email was wrong."

Much like a print newspaper's correction on page D27 of a front page mistake I am certain only a tiny fraction of people who received the original false description of Mr. Obama's visit to Bagram will ever read the factual follow-up. Something to keep in mind before any of us hit Send on something that might be too good to be true.

For those who don't have them bookmarked, there are two terrific websites worth visiting to check the veracity of forwarded material of any kind. You can find more details on all of the examples mentioned above as well as hundreds more.

June 22, 2008

A guy I know named Bruce Maiman has a subscription-only blog in which he sometimes he makes a lot of sense. Here's a chunk l enjoyed from Thursday's post, on a very timely issue of concern to all Americans. It's a little wonky in places but worth wading through.....

With gas prices where they are and economic pressures mounting, President Bush asked Congress yesterday to lift the federal ban on offshore drilling and to allow drilling in Alaska's wildlife refuge, ANWR, saying there is no excuse for delay. Mr Bush pointed the finger of blame for past delays at Democrats on Capitol Hill who have "rejected every proposal, and now Americans are paying the price for this obstruction." There's little chance Democrats will approve drilling offshore or in Alaska, some perhaps influenced by environmental concerns, others skeptical about the claims that drilling will solve the problem since oil from such operations will take as much as a decade to get to the pumps.But as is often the case in politics, there's always more to the story. The NY Times notes that "the topic of coastal drilling has been an extremely sensitive one in the Bush family; Mr. Bush's father, the first President Bush, signed an executive order in 1990 banning coastal oil exploration, and Mr. Bush’s brother Jeb was an outspoken opponent of offshore drilling when he was governor of Florida."Florida's new governor, Charlie Christ, in the past opposed offshore drilling; he's changed his mind, citing high gas prices. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California opposes the president's call to lift the offshore drilling ban. And while the White House says the president is considering repealing his father's order, "he's not taking any executive action." At least not yet. The president also proposed lifting restrictions on oil shale leasing in what's called the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and easing the regulatory process to expand oil refining capacity.Fact Check: Just how much oil do we have offshore? Let's put it this way: Drilling is not gonna be like rubbing the magic lamp. We're only talking about acreage that is presently off limits, which the American Petroleum Institute says will yield about a million to two million barrels a day and that it would only yield a supply for between two to two-and-a-half years of what we use in the United States. That's all we're talking about, and that's if the drilling acreage that opens up actually turns up oil, let alone oil that's economically viable to drill. The API says --quote-- "only a small share of the leases have development potential." Now, is there more potential oil yield offshore? Yes. The oil companies have leases for 68 million acres right now that they're not drilling in, but the moratorium acreage is only about a fifth that size.But it's not just a matter of drilling; the issue being ignored is the time it would take to drill for it. In 2004, the Energy Information Administration released a report saying that if Congress were to allow drilling in ANWR that year, the oil would not actually begin flowing until 2013 and peak production would not be reached until 2025. Offshore drilling? We'd have to wait 7-10 years for oil to arrive at the pumps. What do we do in the meantime? Last year, the EIA did a detailed study of the likely outcome of offshore drilling that concluded: "The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. The impact of the projected 7% increase in lower-48 oil production that might result is expected to be insignificant." And, while the president promised "about a million additional barrels of oil every day," just from ANWR alone, he neglected to mention that, according to Energy Literacy Advocates, the U-S uses 21 million barrels of oil a day. The additional production would account for less than five percent of our current total oil use. Even adding in the additional million-to-two-million barrels a day from offshore drilling (if we do that), that's still only by today's consumption standard; in 10 years, more people, more cars, more energy needs, what will the demand be then? Not to mention the price of a gallon of gas? And let's not forget that none of this drilling --none of it-- will be worth squat without the capacity to refine the product, and in case you hadn't heard, the average length of time it takes to build a refinery from start to finish, from the moment ground is broken to the moment the plant is online? Seven years. Again, what good is that going to do us today?
The real deal: This issue is being politicized --shocker! If you're pro-drilling, you should be madder than the people who are against it. Here's why: There are two orders that keep Big Oil from drilling offshore in these areas right now. One is from Congress; the other is an executive order signed by the president that bans new leases being handed out until at least 2012. That executive order came from the George Bush --the first President Bush, not this one. Here's what's interesting. President Bush is telling Congress they need to eliminate their bill, but he hasn't done his part by withdrawing the executive order. If he's really interested in doing this, why hasn't he rescinded the executive order, which he could do just by signing a piece of paper? He's the decider, ain't he? He's not doing it because the House Appropriations Committee was supposed to vote yesterday on whether or not to extend the offshore ban (which goes to 2012 right now) --they postponed the vote. Congress is an important part of this story, too, but so is the president. Now withdrawing his father's order wouldn't okay drilling --Congress has to vote on that-- but it would allow new leases to be given out. And more important, it would be a sign of executive leadership, the kind we need on this issue, but instead, he'd rather blame Democrats and environmentalists? Everyone has to give a little bit here and pull their own weight, but we're getting nothing more than politics, which should have both sides ticked off. Campaign Analysis: The president's call for offshore drilling have injected him squarely into the presidential campaign, by putting the full weight of the White House behind John McCain at a time when the Senator is trying to demonstrate presidential stature. But it will also expose McCain to accusations from Democrats that a McCain presidency would be akin to a Bush third term. At the same time, the move will put the onus on Democrats, many of whom have long been staunchly opposed to offshore drilling. And it is likely to exacerbate the 30-year-old standoff in Washington over whether domestic drilling or conservation is the way to end American dependence on foreign oil.The prevailing sentiment in the country is that oil is not necessarily the way to go. Reasons include: --Resentment towards oil companies for the high gas prices --Others don't trust the oil companies and suspect the prices aren't going to drop anyway --Still others worry about the environment --Others say the president never mentioned conservation or fuel efficiency standards, the so-called CAFÉ standards. Why aren't we pushing Detroit to meet CAFE standards, standards the Japanese have been meeting for years? --Others who can't afford to gas up their cars right now wanna know what good it'll do to have the oil 10 years from now? The pressure may be less about drilling and more about today, what about today? Bottom line: The problem with the president's proposal is that it's not a mandate; it's not the Manhattan Project everyone says the country needs, and frankly, the president has none of the political capital, public equity or leadership capacity to make that happen. Everything he said today was about just one part of the equation: Oil, and if anyone has an even worse approval rating than the president, it's Big Oil. We're being asked to put our trust in an entity that no one trusts. That's a hard sell politically, particularly when you're an unpopular lame duck president.What will have more resonance is a call to change the country's entire energy infrastructure, and that requires the pursuit of energy solutions on all fronts --oil, nuclear and alternative-- and it needs to be smart and practical.
Consider Honda Motors, which, incidentally has far greater brand integrity than the oil industry, rolled their first zero-emissions, hydrogen fuel cell car off the assembly line this week in Japan --the four-seat, FCX Clarity. It gets 300 miles on a single fuelling with a top speed of 99 mph. Some of them will be leased in California to start, more cars are due out next year and Honda plans to be at full mass-production capacity of a fuel-cell car within ten years. That's the same 10 years the Energy Department has said it will take for oil from ANWR or offshore to get to our gas stations. Which is the wiser long-term investment, drilling for oil we won't see for 10 years, or developing and improving a mode of transportation that will make oil obsolete as a fuel source for the automobile? By all means, do both; do everything, but let's do it with common sense. Right?

Me again. The one major plot line Bruce leavesout is the Democrats' ridiculous plan recently to further tax the "windfall profits" of the oil companies. Since when do we want our government deciding how much profit a business can make? Except for price gouging situations in the time of actual emergencies, who is to say how much profit is "enough" anyway? There are plenty of companies with a higher profit margin than Exxon-Mobil - Microsoft for example. Should the government tell them how much they are allowed to make too? And by-the-way, the feds make more in gasoline taxes per gallon sold than the oil companies do! How about we start reducing the cost to the consumer from there first?

June 17, 2008

There are many, many things that our local, state, and national government should be working hard on these days to keep our great country moving upward and onward. I ordinarily think interfering with legal, private enterprise should be last on that list, if at all. Let the marketplace determine the winners from the losers I say. Usually.

But California state representative Anna Eschoo (Gesundheit!) has had enough and I am right there with her. She has introduced a bill that will lower the volume on television commercials. Amen. She says, "I've had it with these loud advertisements. If I'm not close to my remote control to push the mute button, it practically blasts you out of the house. It's that annoying. And it's totally unnecessary."

The bill is called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, or CALM. I love it and I love Ms. Eschoo and I want to vote for her for something. Seriously, if my iPod can play everything at the same volume then there must be an easy way that the shows and the spots can pay at the same level too.

I watch TV to be lazy. Don't make me work while I do it, even if it is only handling the remote and no, that's not a euphemism.

Click here to read more about the proposed law and read the lame excuses that advertisers and television executives are already giving my sweet Anna. Courage.

May 20, 2008

This post isn't exactly about politics although it does start with Senator Barack Obama, the likely nominee for the Democratic Party in 2008.

This past weekend the candidate gave a stump speech, this time in Portland, Oregon and it is totally a coincidence that this is the second day in a row I've written about the Beaver State.

What was noteworthy about this appearance was the astonishing size of the crowd. The Portland Fire Bureau estimated that 75,000 people turned up to see a politician speak.

Oregon is, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than ninety percent white. Interestingly, that is 40% more white than Mr. Obama is.

Like I said, this is not about politics. Forget who you are thinking of voting for or why. Let's talk about audience appeal, magnetism, charisma, or whatever word you want to describe that could make 75,000 people spend a Sunday listening to a speech. Even for free. Even on a nice day on the banks of the beautiful Willamette River.

How many others can you think of? No way President Bush draws that. Or even Miley Cyrus. I'll suggest Pope Benedict might hit that number. But who else? Can you think of anyone else with that kind of pull to add to my two-person list?

May 17, 2008

As you know, The California Supreme Court dropped a gay atomic bomb on Thursday when they overturned the ban on same-sex marriages in that state. But that is not what this post is about, no matter how much I enjoy seeing Portia Di Rossi kiss a girl even if it is just EllenDeGeneres.

I've caught some of the coverage on the cable news channels and particularly on talk radio and have had just about an assful over two things I keep hearing said over and over again.

Thing 1. "We've got to stop these activist judges."

Okay, someone help me here. President Bush was the first person I ever heard use this term and it has caught on like Free Hot Wings ever since. If a judge or court makes a ruling one disagrees with, then they are characterized as "activist judges." But if one agrees with the ruling then the judge or court was "accurately interpreting the law." Because.....everyone who makes those statements is also a constitutional scholar so they would know?

That doesn't give the judicial branch, generally the most learned of any part of our government, much credit, does it? In this particular ruling, for instance, the California Supreme Court, where six of the seven were justices were Republican appointees, voted 4-3 to overturn the earlier Appeals court ruling.

You can read the opinions of all seven and they all justify their individual conclusions based on their interpretations of the Constitution, not based on their personal views on this one issue. They used the same criteria earlier courts used to make discrimination against citizens based on gender and race illegal in this country. I am not saying there aren't any bad judges or judges who sometimes make legal mistakes but that is why we have a higher court in place to have a way to settle any questions. This system worked exactly the way it was designed, regardless of the outcome.

Thing 2: "This ruling lets four wackos hijack the will of the people."

First of all, we've done pretty well in this country with a "majority rules" form of government for a very long time. 51-49 still makes a law in the Senate, and 500,000 to 499,999 still gets you elected as Mayor of any number of good-sized cities in this country. 4-3 means 4 wins.

Secondly, and this one irks me the mostest. It is not the job of the California Supreme Court or any other judge to rule according to the will of the people. No, their job is to rule according to the law. The people can legislate their will as much as they want as long as their wishes do not violate the Constitution. There are lots of laws that I disagree with and many rulings that make me furious. But that doesn't mean judges should care what I think. That is not their job.

May 12, 2008

There were a large number of Democrats who would have liked to have seen you get the party's nomination when you ran for president in 2004, who felt that you got a raw deal being derailed by The Scream, and that you would have had a much better chance of preventing George Bush's second term than old WhatsHisName who ran and failed.

You've lost whatever goodwill you had with this voter though with the way you're guiding the DNC through the 2008 campaign. Your current television commercial grossly distorting Senator McCain's comments about American involvement in Iraq for 100 years is something you should be very ashamed of, not just as the party leader but as a U.S. citizen.

I know you've seen the unedited remarks from the town hall meeting in New Hampshire where Mr. McCain answered that question about President Bush's belief that U.S. troops might be in Iraq for 50 years. He made it very clear that whether is 50 or 100 years it would be fine with him "as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." To further clarify his meaning he reminded the audience that we have been in Japan for more than 60 years and South Korea for more than 50. He was obviously talking about peacekeeping, not combat deployment.

The only people who could draw the conclusion your television ad does, that Senator McCain's intention is 100 more years of the kind of involvement we have had in Iraq the last five, are either stupid, dishonest, or both.

What's most troubling for me is that you have two candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination whose positions both differ vastly from Senator McCain's on how to proceed in this war. Why not spend that advertising money to talk about what their plans are instead of making up policies for your opponent?

Political ads like this one are not only unethical, they denigrate our democratic process. They are also insulting to the American people. If you can't see that then you prove yourself to be unfit to lead the party, much less a nation.

May 03, 2008

That was the headline on anews wire service story in the print edition of yesterday's Seattle Post- Intelligencer. It is not the kind of headline that would guarantee I would keep reading but I am glad I took the time. Please join me and you'll see why.

"Denied transplant over pot use: A musician who was denied a liver transplant because he used medical marijuana with medical approval under Washington state law to ease the symptoms of advance hepatitis C died Thursday.

The death of Timothy Garon, 56, at Bailey-Boushay House, an intensive-care nursing center, was confirmed to the Associated Press by his lawyer and a spokeswoman for Virginia Mason Medical Center, which operates Bailey-Boushay.

Garon died a week after his doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list because of his use of marijuana."

Okay, everybody still with me? The way that deal works, and this is the case in many other states as well, is that you are automaticallydenied a place on the organ transplant list if you have taken any non-prescription drugs in the past six months. Or taken the one prescription drug that your doctor gives you that is singled out above all others by the U.S. Government as being more dangerous than the rest.

Oh, but you are welcome to re-apply if you are "clean" for six months though, if you are still alive.

When I am running things (I'll get back to you with a date) there will be this new law on the books in my state:

No level of government gets to decide what a doctor can and can not prescribe to his patients.

March 13, 2008

Sooooooooooo....anything going on with the Governor of New York lately? Oh, wait, it's the only thing on television for 72 hours now because America loves its sex scandals more than anything in the whole wide world.

Newsweek ran an entertaining recap of some past celebrity johns and their hos this week reminding us of everyone from Jerry Springer (who got caught because he paid the girl by check- ha ha) to Hugh Grant (who had freaking Liz Hurley at home - hello?) to Jimmy Swaggart ( best man tears ever). Click here for all the memories.

That reminds me. Look, I know Eliot Spitzer is a scumbag. I'm not defending him. He deserves to lose his job and his wife. But I have to ask something to make sure I am clear on the particulars of how our crazy prostitution laws work in this country.

If a guy pays a chick fifty bucks to have sex with him then they are both breaking the law and could be arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated. But if the same guy pays the same chick fifty bucks to have sex with him but records it and sells it as a movie, then it is 100% legal and protected by the First Amendment. Do I have that correct?

Okay, okay, if the same guy pays the same chick fifty bucks to have sex with him then they get arrested again and now they are really in trouble as repeat offenders, right? But if that guy takes his lady friend out to a fifty dollar dinner instead and then has sex with her then it's called dating?

March 04, 2008

"On March 4th, your vote will decide who will be in the White House to pick up the phone when it rings at 3 AM."

By now you have likely seen or heard about the above ad promoting Senator Hillary Clinton, which ran this weekend in the latest primary states of Texas and Illinois. Will they be enough to stop the Barack Obama Express? If you haven't seen it, please watch as I have some questions.

1. Is that scary music playing during the commercial from Saw 2? Or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Jeez, it's a phone call, not a Zombie Invasion.

2. Why is the mom in the ad checking in on her kids at 3:00 a.m.? Just getting in from a big night of whoring around? Or did she sense that the phone was ringing at the White House, presumably hundreds of miles away from the ad's target cities of Cincinnati or Houston?

3. Wait, why does the Senator from New York have so much more foreign policy experience than the Senator from Illinois? Not because she is married to the guy who used to answer those 3 a.m. calls I hope. I mean, I'm married to a fashion designer but that doesn't qualify me to advise Jennifer Aniston on what to wear on the red carpet.

4. Why is Hillary fully dressed in a suit, wearing makeup and jewelry at 3 a.m.? Did she just come in from a big night of whoring around too?

5. Most confusing to me: If the message is that Senator Clinton is the better choice to leap for the phone call in the middle of the night to handle that urgent global crisis, WHY DOES IT TAKE HER SIX RINGS TO ANSWER??

March 01, 2008

Most people, make that many people....oh, hell, somefolks may remember from 10th grade civics class that our Constitution requires one be a "natural born" U.S. citizen to be eligible to serve as president. (Sorry, Governator!)

So, in his approximately 150 years of political service it has never mattered until now that Senator John McCainwas not born here. He arrived in the Panama Canal Zone while his father served there in the Navy. Who knew?

Turns out that no one has ever litigated the question of what the
provision means for someone who wasn't born in the continental United
States, but who had citizenship at birth because of his or her parents,
or because of laws giving citizenship to children of U-S military
personnel overseas.

Do you think someone will file this challenge in the courts this year to see if Senator McCain will be ruled ineligible to serve? And is it more likely to be A) Democrats trying to take out their toughest opponent in the general election? or B) Mike Huckabee so he can say it was God's will so that he can be the nominee instead?

FYI, there were even a few sticklers who questioned Barry Goldwater's eligibility when he was the Republican nominee for president back in 1964. He was, like McCain, a senator from Arizona but was born there before it was admitted as a state. It turned out people found other reasons to not vote for him that year anyway.

A lawyer with John McCain's campaign says "I don't have much doubt about (his eligibility)" though he is still researching the issue.

I will be watching this one with more slightly more interest than usual because I was also born a U.S. citizen on a foreign military base. I just assumed I wasn't eligible to one day run for president and lived my life accordingly. I can think of a few things I would have passed on if I had known it was still an option. It's way too late now.

February 19, 2008

Yeah, yesterday was Presidents' Day, which by-the-way is still officially known by the U.S. Government as Washington's Birthday, and I celebrated like I always do: writing another chapter in the book of haiku about Benjamin Harrison that is my life's work.

As patriotic and appropriate as that was as a way to spend the holiday, I have to say that my beautiful bride Donna totally out-Presidented me yesterday.

She and her Pop were in Simi Valley, California visiting the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. They even got their photo taken on board Air Force One! She reports back that it was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon and if there was any bad news it's that they recently took down the portrait mosaic made of jelly beans that hung in the library.

That news, unfortunately, makes the just released yesterday new book Oval Office Oddities already outdated. Author Bill Fawcett suggest these other fascinating places to visit too and I'm pretty sure they are still there.

In Washington D.C., the USS Sequoia, the 104 foot former Presidential yacht, now open for tours, where you can see the scratch in the table where Harry Truman damaged it with a cigar cutter after a particularly bad hand of cards.

In Palm Springs, California, the Seven Lakes Country Club, where former president Eisenhower shot his very first hole-in-one after decades of playing golf.

Back to D.C., the Willard Hotel, where the term "lobbyist" was born! President Grant hung out in the lobby there almost every night for a drink and a cigar and people would wait there for him to get there so they could get his ear.

Springfield, Illinois, Abe Lincoln's tomb. Go to hear the story of the two guys who tried to steal the body in 1876. They would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for some meddling kids. P.S. There was no law against stealing a body in Illinois so they were only charged with breaking the lock on the tomb.

P.S. I should have remembered this in time for yesterday's post but here it is now. "Same goes to you crazies who spell "wacko" as "whacko." What the hell are you thinking?"

February 17, 2008

By now you've likely heard of the controversy that arose this month over a remark MSNBC talking head David Schuster made while guesting on fellow commentator's Chris Mathews' show.

He was referring to former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton's role on the campaign trail for her mother's presidential bid and said, "doesn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?"

My first thought when I heard the quote was that he probably meant to say "pimped," not "pimped out." If Chelsea were truly pimped out wouldn't she be wearing a full length chinchilla coat and drinking Cristal from a solid gold chalice? If she were being pimped, as I think Mr. Schuster was suggesting, then she would be being coerced against her will to give speeches, shake hands, and sit with her Dad while Mom gives boring speech after speech in state after state.

I think the suggestion is absurd, first of all. I mean, she's 28 years old, not 14 and she clearly isn't out there against her will. She's just pitching in to help out the family business. I also think the supposed outrage from Senator Clinton's people is even more laughable. Are they really so out of touch with contemporary language use in the 21st century as to be offended by the word "pimp?" This reminds me so much of the Rutgers womens basketball team last year suggesting that Don Imus accused them of actuallyhaving sex for money because he used the word "ho" in his now infamous description of the girls. "Ho" has other more colloquial meanings than the slang for "whore".

Unrelated to the mini-drama on the Democratic side, it turns out that John McCain's daughter is not only on the campaign trail stumping for Daddy, and apparently willingly, but she is also blogging about it!

Check out McCainBlogette.com to read 23 year old Megan's daily account of the campaign grind. First of all, see photo. Yes, please. Secondly, if McCain wins it will be the first time I imagine that music from Wilco, Sleater-Kinney, and the Decemberists will be heard in the White House, based on Megan's iPod shuffle playlist she posted on her blog yesterday.

Finally, here's the funniest of the pictures that she posted in the last week.

February 09, 2008

The next President of the United States was in the Seatttle area yesterday, ahead of today's Washington State caucus.

Senator Clinton was in Tacoma at the University of Puget Sound. Senator McCain blew into town in for a two hour fundraiser last night at the downtown Westin Hotel. Senator Obama addressed more than 20,000 folks at an overflowing Key Arena, far outdrawing our basketball Sonics who play there.

I was talking to Anel, my Token Black Friend, the other day and he remarked that he's heard talk in his neighborhood that if Obama is elected president they'd better just plan on burying him in the same suit he's inaugurated in. In other words, his term would last from about noon to 12:30 on January 20, 2009.

Ignoring how horrifying that would be, let's discuss it hypothetically for a minute. Say the shooter (just guessing) does the deed and is immediately killed on the scene by the D.C. Police. He (or she) didn't leave a note at home and never talked to anyone ahead of time to reveal his plan or motive. The world would probably assume race was the reason for the treason, I'm sure.

Not so fast! Did you know that there have been assassination attempts against at least fifteen U.S. Presidents and none of them were black?

Almost everyone knows the sad stories of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Kennedy. At some point in high school you likely learned that President Garfield was shot in 1881 and died three months later. President McKinley only lasted a week after he was mortally wounded in 1901.

Then there are all the ones who in some cases literally dodged a bullet.

Andrew Jackson beat down his would-be killer with a cane after the man fired and missed twice with flintlock pistols at the U.S. Capitol in 1835.

Teddy Roosevelt took a shot to the chest in 1912 and not only survived, but gave the speech he was in Milwaukee to deliver before he even went to the hospital. And you thought McCain was tough!

In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt escaped unharmed but the Mayor of Chicago was killed by one of the five bullets shot at the stage they were on in Miami.

Harry Truman survived an ambush attack at D.C.'s Blair House by two men in 1950. One was killed by guards, the other convicted of the assassination attempt and awarded the death penalty. The President later commuted the sentence to life in prison.

Did you see the movie The Assassination of Richard Nixon, starring Sean Penn? It depicts a true story of a man who, in 1974, attempted to hijack an airplane and fly it into the White House and kill the President. He ended up killing both pilots, then himself instead.

Know the names Squeaky Fromme or Sarah Jane Moore? Each attempted to shoot Gerald Ford in California two weeks apart in September 1975.

Secret Service agents protecting Jimmy Carter arrested the gunman who came for him in Los Angeles in 1979. He claimed he was just there to create a diversion while Mexican hit men with sniper rifles did the killing.

John Hinckley, Jr. did not get the girl when he shot Ronald Reagan to try to impress actress Jodie Foster in 1981.

A few months after he left office in 1993, sixteen Iraqis smuggled a car bomb into Kuwait with the intent to kill George H.W. Bush as he spoke at Kuwait University.

Bill Clinton endured two assassination attempts during his long year in the White House of 1994; one when a Cessna 150 crashed onto the grounds there and the other when a man fired a semi-automatic rifle from out on Pennsylvania Avenue.

A chance malfunction in its detonator kept a live hand grenade from exploding and potentially killing its target, President George W. Bush, when it was hurled by a man in Freedom Square in Tblisi, Georgia in 2005.

Sorry for the bad news, Barack, but you've got about a one in three chance of someone trying to kill you if you win the presidency, no matter who you are. Good luck with that.

February 05, 2008

Iwasn't going to blog about that new survey's results on happiness when I saw it last week but I got to thinking about it again yesterday.

In case you missed it, here is an edited synopsis from the Los Angeles Times:

"The road to happiness is U-shaped.

New research this week has found that happiness over the course of a lifetime follows a universal curve in which the greatest bliss occurs at the beginning and end of life, while misery dominates middle age.

The pattern was consistent around the globe, according to the report, which examined social survey data on 2 million people in 80 countries, including the United States.

The study, conducted by economists Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England and David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, set out to look at the relationship between age and happiness.

Researchers controlled for other factors that affect happiness, such as divorce, job loss and income.

The researchers, whose study will be published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, found that in the United States happiness reached its lowest point around age 40 in women and age 50 in men.

Oswald was perplexed by the results. He said it was possible that in midlife people learn to accept their strengths and weaknesses and abandon unrealistic aspirations."

I am perplexed too. Sure, I can understand the high levels of satisfaction among 20 years old, at one peak on the graph. They are optimistic, hopeful and stupid. But I guess I can't yet know why 80 years olds are just as happy. I imagine I'll be terrified about waking up dead every morning. That is if I even make it that far.

As for abandoning "unrealistic aspirations," as the researcher suggests to explain the low happiness levels for Americans in their 40s, I have left most of mine behind. I've gradually accepted that I will not be an astronaut or a baseball player and I will never own a tapir.

I was also forced to examine just how little I have accomplished when I realized that Senator Barack Obama, who at this point in the '08 campaign is still a viable candidate to be the next President of the United States, is younger than I am. I have trouble working a can opener and this guy might run the country?

January 17, 2008

So Romney won the Michigan state primary, McCain and Clinton took their respective party's crown in New Hampshire, and Huckabee and Obama were the #1s in Iowa. Perhaps one of these 2008 hopefuls will end up in the White House next year as President of the United States.

Or perhaps instead one of them will join Samuel Tilden, Horatio Seymour or Rufus King and have his portrait hung in the They Also Ran Museum. We never got to have a president names Rufus because he lost to James Monroe in 1816.

Yep, it's a museum dedicated to the other party's nominee, the candidate who lost the presidential election, and you'll find it in the mezzanine of the First State Bank in Norton, Kansas.

Several candidates lost their first bid for the presidency, but were successful on their second attempts, among them Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon. Some won a first term but lost a second, such as Herbert Hoover and George H.W. Bush.

Native son Bob Dole is proudly displayed. He lost to Bill Clinton in 1996.

Henry Clay is the nation's most consistent loser - running as a presidential candidate three times for three different political parties, losing to John Quincy Adams in 1824 as a Democratic Republican, to Andrew Jackson in 1832 on the National Republican ticket, and finally to James Polk in 1844 when Clay ran as a Whig. Whew.

I am sick just now learning of this awesome attraction while enjoying the 2008 Farmer's Almanac and have quoted them liberally here. If it had been included in last year's Almanac I would have made sure to include the town of Norton in my vacation plans when I visited Kansas for a week last March. Remind me to post photos one day soon.

October 29, 2007

I wrote in an earlier post how it was time to vote out every member of the House or Senate up for re-election next year. Ninety percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the job Congress is doing and the other ten percent are just wrong.

Now it looks like that won't be enough to get the kind of politician who is killing this country out of Washington. Looks like we have to move on to other government agencies as well.

Please tell me you heard about the Federal Emergency Management Agency's "press conference" this week to take questions on their ongoing effort to assist in the battling of the Southern California wildfires.

Rather than accept questions from actual journalists, who were given just 15 minutes notice that the Q & A was happening, the deputy director of FEMA Harvey Johnson instead put his own employees in the briefing room to pose as reporters. Then he only called on his own people to ask softball questions that he could then answer to make sure FEMA was put in the best possible light.

As an aside, FEMA starred in what I think was one of the most significant, yet underreported stories of 2007. They knew Hurricane Katrina refugees were getting sick, poisoned by breathing formaldehyde from living in the poorly ventilated government provided trailers and they did nothing about it. When enough children got sick enough and the Center For Disease Control started an investigation, them FEMA was forced to confront the problem.

Please understand, United States government employees knew they had put their own citizens in poisoned trailers - they had been alerted to the problem by dozens of sick residents -and waited until someone else found about it and then were forced to act.

Wait there's more!

Last week the Republican National Committee added this page to their official website.

"Ghost and Gals,

Today the RNC is very proud to introduce our newest web feature and game, "Scariest Democrat." What do Halloween and politics have in common? Scary Democrats! Every year, the Republican National Committee has a hard time determining who is the scariest Democrat of the bunch. Just like the fall harvest, there's an abundance from which to choose. That's where you come in. We need your help in determining who the RNC should announce as the "Scariest Democrat" in 2007. Cast your vote and play today to help the RNC peg the "Scariest Democrat" in American politics."

Are you freaking kidding me? This is what passes for politics now? This is how a Presidential campaign is being run ? These are adults, not Highlights Magazine puzzle editors making these decisions?

If John F. Kennedy were alive today he would demand to be immediately taken to Dallas and rent a convertible.

October 09, 2007

The latest Zogby survey is out and it shows Congress' approval rating down to eleven percent, another all time low. So 11% are "fir" and 89% are "agin." Nearly nine of of ten Americans, statistically, say the House and the Senate are doing a piss-poor job. Not sure if that was the actual language of the question but that is the message I am hearing based on these numbers.

For a good while now I've been percolating the idea that is is time to vote Congress out. All of them. Every single incumbent. Time to start over, and with as many people as we can elect who have never held a political office as possible.

Poking around online I see others have reached the same conclusion. Maybe it's time for me to do something with VoteCongressOut.org, one of my many unused domain names. I ask you, and with all seriousness, could 535 freshmen congressmen do worse than the current batch of idiots?

Update! And it's good news! 57 year old Congresswoman Jo Ann David (R-Va.) died Saturday morning of cancer.